SKR quotables

[OgreBattle]

This thread is for quotes by SKR that just make you go "Wow, so SKR"

Here's a Paizo thread about trap option in Pathfinder.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pvkj&page= ... Pathfinder
SKR jumps in to defend his design choices:

I want my water-balloon-throwing fighter to be able to deal the same damage as a longbow-shooting fighter. Why does Pathfinder have trap options for some ranged characters?

(Is this some kind of jab at flask rogues??)

Replace "water-balloon-throwing" with any of the following

axe-throwing
blowgun-firing
dagger-throwing
dart-throwing
javelin-throwing
sling-using
spear-throwing

and the complaint is no less ridiculous.

Some options are worse than others because the game actually tries to model that some options in life are worse than others. And by "worse" I mean "does less damage per round."

Ah, so it's about realism.

Drachasor wrote:
With regards to the crossbowman, I don't think that's the full story of what is going on. In the long, long ago of 3.0 design, I'm sure that's what was going on. Then I imagine someone said "hey, we should give a bone to people who like crossbows", so Rapid Shot was made as a kind of hack on existing rules.

I don't see how Rapid Shot is a "bone" to crossbow users, as it works for all ranged weapons.

Nicos wrote:
In life I do not se how a crossbow is worst than a bow in general terms.


It is for the same reason it is in the game: because you can't fire it as often as you can a bow.

Nicos wrote:
But the complaint goes beyond that. it is not that a xbow is weaker that a bow is that a crossboman that take two feat tax is still weaker than an archer. I think that is against the whole idea of having feats in the first place.

And the dagger fighter can take two extra feats and still deal less damage than a greatsword fighter. Because daggers can't deal as much damage as greatswords. There's a reason why soldiers used swords instead of daggers as their primary weapon.

Guy arguing with SKR: This is a bad example. A TWF dagger user will eventually do pretty decent damage when full attacks, More than the Greatsowrd user I would say*(Again, once he have the feats).

TWF dagger wielder can only compete with the greatsword damage if he takes several feats. Thus, my comparison is of a one-dagger-fighter vs. one-greatsword-fighter.

Guy arguing with SKR: Well, to nitpick a bit, swords actually weren't that common among soldiers. Historically spears and their kin were used a lot more often by armies.

Spears were more common in war because they cost less to make than a sword, a point which is irrelevant to adventurers after level 1.

guy arguing with SKR: It seems bad form to trash talk people with legitimate pathfinder complaints.

I don't consider "real life weapon X can't be fired as often as real life weapon Y, and I don't like that the game models reality" is a legitimate complaint.

Tholomyes wrote:
Always nice to see the Paizo staff is so responsive to the concerns and complaints of their customers. /sarcasm

I'm taking the time to read the boards and see what people are saying. Would you be better served by everyone ignoring this thread and not responding to complaints at all? I am here listening to you. I just disagree with your premise, or that "crossbows should be as good as longbows" is a legitimate complaint.

proftobe wrote:
I agree It silly that weapons are THAT gimped just because designers decided that 1 weapon was better than another.
The designers didn't decide that, reality decided that.

Game stats for dogs are more powerful than game stats for cats. Why? Because in real life dogs are more dangerous than housecats. Is this "gimping" the "I have a guard cat" character compared to the "I have a guard dog" character? No, because you know that dogs are more dangerous than cats and should have better stats, even if that means the "I have a guard cat" character concept ends up weaker than the dog equivalent.

At some level, the game has to model reality, otherwise you have no idea what your characters can and cannot do. Can I jump cross that 1-foot hole? I don't know. Does a dagger weigh more than a longsword? I don't know. How tall is a human? I don't know. Can I see a door that's 5 feet away? We have the in-game answers to these questions because we know the answers in reality. If you abandon the idea that the (nonmagical aspects of the) game has to be based partially in reality, then you're playing something like TOON where it doesn't have to match reality at all. But you're not playing TOON, you're playing a game that's supposed to be a reasonable simulation of a pseudo-medieval fantasy world where swords are sharp, dwarves are shorter than humans, and falling damage can kill you.

You accept that a dagger deals 1d4 compared to a greatsword that deals 2d6... even though that "hurts dagger builds."

A light crossbow is an easier weapon to learn how to use than a longbow (so easy that most classes get proficiency in it for free). It costs less than a longbow (35 gp vs. 75 gp). You can fire a light crossbow while prone, but you can't do so with a longbow. You don't apply your Strength penalty to your light crossbow damage, but you do to your longbow damage. You can fire a light crossbow one-handed, but there's no way you can do that with a longbow.
The drawback to these advantages is it requires a move action to reload a light crossbow. In real life, can someone fire a light crossbow as fast as a person of equivalent skill fires a longbow? No. We're modeling reality with these rules... just as saying "a crossbow deals piercing damage" is modeling reality.

Does that increased reload time negatively affect the character concept of the "crossbow master" at higher levels? In that he has to take ONE extra feat to get the same rate of fire as the "longbow master," yes. Does that mean the crossbow master is "gimped," as you put it? Hardly.

Should we throw out the realistic concept that "a crossbow takes longer to reload than a longbow" so the "crossbow master" character concept doesn't have to spend an extra feat to keep up with the "longbow master"? I do not think so.

And that's how SKR defends the realism in Pathfinder.

[Dean]

Yeah I read that thread, it is a real doozie. If you are a designer and the Paizils are telling you you're wrong you must be an Uwe Boll level failure.

[GâtFromKI]

And that's how SKR defends the realism in Pathfinder.

SKR doesn't defend realism. SKR is just a stupid troll who use whatever fallacy he thinks is the best fitted for trolling. Here, he uses realism for trolling.

If someone says "realistically, guns should be easier to aim than bow, but in the game, they are harder to aim (a first level commoner can be proficient with bow but not with gun)", SKR will troll by explaining that he values balance over realism. Actually he already did that, long before explaining that crossbow-archetype sucks because he values realism over balance.

[Dean]

I wouldn't say he's a troll so much as a coward. It takes some semblance of bravery and pride to tell someone they are right and you are wrong. It's much easier to just embrace and extoll whatever set of cognitively dissonant ideas will let you pretend you've been right all along even if you contradict yourself.

[Whipstitch]

Sad thing is if it weren't for his hilarious habit of rhetorical overreach I'd say this is one of the least stupid positions he's staked out over the years. There's a case to be made for letting shitty gear options exist and basing which gear gets the shitty tag on historical precedent, since it helps model low end situations like dirt farmers getting reamed by low level but better equipped people in a manner that is a bit better than lolrandom. There's obvious pros and cons, of course, but it's plausible that he could have had a much better conversation on the subject if he wasn't such a dingus.

[GâtFromKI]

Sad thing is if it weren't for his hilarious habit of rhetorical overreach I'd say this is one of the least stupid positions he's staked out over the years.

No.

Looking at the equipment chapter, I can see that the crossbow suck in less that 30 seconds: I see that the crossbow is classified as a "toy weapon" while the bow is classified as a "martial weapon". Reading the rules takes 1 minute and confirm that: if you can use martial weapons, you use a bow, but some classes can only use toys, so there is the crossbow for them. I'm OK with obviously weak option for characters who can't have better stuff.

But in some splatbooks, you have also crossbow archetype for fighters and rangers. Reading those archetypes and comparing their possibilities with other fighters and rangers takes more than 10 minutes, and at the end, those archetypes suck compared with a regular fighter/ranger using a bow. They use the same amount of resources as the regular character, but the fighter/ranger using a dedicated archetype sucks.

Reading those archetypes was a complete waste of my time; writing it was a complete waste of the author's time. Buying this piece of text was a complete waste of my money (at least, I didn't buy any rule book from Paizo after the APG). Having underpowered crap for underpowered classes just serve to increase page count; but as Frank explained formerly, D&D is already too verbose: piece of shit like the crossbowman makes the game worse at every level.

Trying to explain its existence by "all option shouldn't be balanced, so we make the game worse by writing useless crap on purpose" is a stupid position.

[deaddmwalking]

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

[hogarth]

I think it's stupid to call a crossbow a "trap option" in the first place (are all Simple weapons trap options?).

Here's my favourite Sean K Reynolds exchange:

August 2010:

I also found that "phantasmal killer" suffers from the same issue: The Trickery Patron grants it, but that spell is ALREADY in the Witch's Spell list!!

It's not an oversight.
She learns the spell for free... which means she doesn't have to spend one of her "add two spells from the witch spell list" at each level on that spell, nor does she need to buy or find a scroll with that spell to teach it to her familiar.

December 2010:

Page 70—In the Patron Spells section, in the
Trickery paragraph, change “8th—phantasmal killer”
to “8th—hallucinatory terrain.”

It's not a mistake and that's why we changed it!

[GâtFromKI]

I think it's stupid to call a crossbow a "trap option" in the first place (are all Simple weapons trap options?).

That's what I explained: the crossbow isn't a trap option, because it's obvious that it suck. An obvious trap isn't really a trap. The warrior also isn't a trap option.

The crossbowman in the other hand is a trap since it looks like it is a playable archetype, and it's a waste of everyone's time; as well as everything improving the crossbow, including the rapid reload feat.

[Whipstitch]

...There's an explicit crossbows only, final destination splat? Christ.

[Username17]

The crossbow has always struck me as a weird choice for a weapon to make "inferior." While not much was done with Roman crossbows, with technological advancements crossbows got better and better. Eventually the crossbow supplanted the regular bow, and not because it was an inferior weapon.

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

Sitting Bull could fire ten arrows before the first arrow hit the ground, and he was firing a bow that had the same pull weight as a longbow and doing it from the back of a moving horse. If you practice some of the "arrow in hand" techniques you can put an amazing number of arrows into the air if that is what you want to do. Orlando Bloom needs sped up footage to fire an arrow per second, but arrow-in-hand people draw arrows from the quiver four at a time and finger-pass them into the string as they pull back each time.

-Username17

[Ferret]

Aside: I always thought you should be able to buy Crossbows with inherent strength bonuses. It never happens that way, though (similar to mighty composite bows, but without the requirement for the character to have the stat; you just buy a crossbow that does 1D6+3 or +4 or whatever) - that'd make them actually useful for dedicated dex-fighter types.

On-Topic: Sean Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen! I don't demand constancy from my designers - far from it, I LIKE people who can learn from new data points. This guy, man, appears to just miss the point. Contrary for contrariness sake.

To Frank's point: the crossbow is an inherently superior weapon to the Longbow, in most cases. Its ONLY weakness is reload time/equipment (powerful historical bows required a separate winch apparatus to redraw the bow after firing), but they were vastly simpler to train the peasantry to use, and more powerful that the vast majority of the bows extant on the battlefield, particularly once steel came into use for the bow arms. UNSUBSTANTIATED BULLSHIT AHOY!:

"As part of his thesis he did extensive research into the physics involved with each weapon, the amount of energy required to peirce various kinds of armor under varied circumstances, etc. His conclusions were that a heavy crossbow was more than capable of penetrating even the heaviest plate, with devestating result to the wearer. The reason they were outlawed by the church was that they were so astoundingly lethal. After the crossbow saw widespread use in medieval warfare the number of deaths among the nobility (who were the ones wearing plate) skyrocketted. The Longbow could actually penetrate lighter varieties of plate as well, but its projectile was so much larger that it lost velocity extremely quickly, reducing its lethal range substantially compared to the crossbow. I belive the figures were around 150 yards and 400+ yards respectively (these being for a lethal shot, not the maximum range of the weapon).

I've actually seen a rather astounding figure based on tests of a medieval crossbow (a late period one with a heavy metal prod, cocked with a windlass and firing a steel bolt) and modern day ballistics testing gel. Those tests determined that a crossbow bolt carried about the same kinetic energy as a 7.62mm NATO round when tested at ranges closer than 100 yards. The crossbow bolt lost energy rapidly after this point, but still would have been lethal to an enemy in full plate (by way of comparison a 7.62 round still retains over 90% of its energy at over 1000 yards). I'm not completely convinced of the validity of this report, but I'm not shcoked either. I've personally seen crossbows fired through archery targets at ranges over 200 yards, these were light, lever cocked bows, not representative of the tremendous power the heaviest of crossbows could produce."

[Koumei]

The crossbow has always struck me as a weird choice for a weapon to make "inferior." While not much was done with Roman crossbows, with technological advancements crossbows got better and better.

To the point where the crossbow idea evolved into this:



How many people are currently equipped with longbows in the US military?

[Antariuk]

When it comes to longbows, Jack Churchill will be there to rescue you.

[nockermensch]

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

EDIT:
In b4 "but that's clearly a composite short bow!"

[virgil]

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

EDIT:
In b4 "but that's clearly a composite short bow!"

As Frank pointed out, it's been a known thing for some time. My wife is from a reservation, and had a bit of a rant about that video treating the technique as some kind of 'lost art'; especially when she tried to take archery classes outside of the tribe and professionals would scold her for using that technique.

[NineInchNall]

Well, to be fair, it's "lost" in the sense that it's no longer considered normal; i.e., it's lost to the greater portion of the population.

[Longes]

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

EDIT:
In b4 "but that's clearly a composite short bow!"

And not just any short bow, but a very light powered one - 30 pounds. For comparison, english long bows are 120p, and hunting bows are 50p. His shooting speed would still be impressive with a normal bow, but much closer to the comparison shots given in the video.

[tussock]

The crossbow thing is just a holdover from D&D being written in 1974. The limits of research into medieval weaponry in the English language was pretty weak and focused on the power (aka, blind luck) of the English in some battles where they beat the French (when they were still ruled by French-speaking Normans, and England and France didn't exist yet, but shhh...).

The Mary Rose wasn't even salvaged until 1982, and it's eventually shown that the big longbows were not accurate and had to be drawn by straitening your whole body with the bow hooked against the knee. Thus all the joint deformation in English bowmen, and most cultures not bothering. Light bows were used alongside them for rapid precision shooting.

So D&D's wrong again. Crossbows were much more powerful than anyone noted in 1974, even though the "French" had many of them at Agincourt, and Longbows were much harder to use than anyone had realised, even though the "British" had them in numbers at Agincourt.

[OgreBattle]

The Mary Rose wasn't even salvaged until 1982, and it's eventually shown that the big longbows were not accurate and had to be drawn by straitening your whole body with the bow hooked against the knee. Thus all the joint deformation in English bowmen, and most cultures not bothering.

East Asians & Central Asian nomads used rings (usually made of bone, ivory)


It lets you draw really strong bows without deforming your bones.

The only time I've seen these mentioned in games is Final Fantasy XI, where they increase your archery ability at the expense of melee.

[tussock]

The Asian bows are typically compound recurve things that can be held and aimed with much less force than the peak draw, and fired a relatively light arrow which was typically unable to penetrate mail armour of the 12th century. They also rotted and fell apart in no time when exposed to European weather. Hungary is a relatively dry plain, the Huns got no further, and nor did anyone else that used them.

So the Welsh style bows are different. A monstrous single-piece carving with maximum force applied at full draw, and you can't physically hold them drawn to aim. Hell, you can't draw them with your arm muscles, it doesn't work (or you can, because you do weights or whatever, but they were tiny people). The arrows for them are much heavier but still couldn't normally pierce helmets and chest plates of the 15th century, so were mostly used for killing horses and any light troops in battle (thus the preponderance of heavy infantry with heavy cav in reserve in the armies that faced up to them).

We call them both bows, and D&D doesn't care, but they're very different tools. The English longbow hasn't existed for centuries, what was learnt from the Mary Rose was that you can't use them like you use modern style bows, at all. Rather like all medieval army weapons, people now don't really know how the fuck they were used in any great detail.

Just that the various Robin Hood tv series and movies are very, very wrong.

[Neurosis]

every fucking thing that SKR said

Wow, what a fucking asshole.

[Neurosis]

For what it's worth, I'm not convinced that a longbow should be able to be fired 5+ times in a six-second round, even by Robin Hood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zGnxeSbb3g

EDIT:
In b4 "but that's clearly a composite short bow!"

HFS that video was awesome. : )

[ishy]

This thread is for quotes by SKR that just make you go "Wow, so SKR"

SKR[/url]]There is a hard (but not-explicity-stated-in-the-rules) limit to what a standard-race PC should be able to do in one round of combat. Even though it's not stated in the rules, it is a real limit

[Lago PARANOIA]

I was about to ask why should we not include Jason Buhlman in this thread as well, but Mr. 'Write Official Feats to Raise Money for his Kitty Cat' is in a whole 'nuther derp class of his own.

He's this close to unseating Bruce Cordell as shittiest D&D writer.